Fatherhood, as Brought to You by Lost

Of all the strings and the string theory and the stringy-haired jungle women on Lost these past five-and-a-half confounding years, at once the most long-standing and believable thread has been the show's daddy issues — specifically between Matthew Fox's Jack Shephard and his father, Christian, played by John Terry, who's become as menacing as Matthew Modine has pristine since their time in Full Metal Jacket. Trouble is, ever since a season-one episode literally titled "All the Best Cowboys Have Daddy Issues," the theme has been explored with all the operating-room obviousness of what I imagine it's like to endure an hour's worth of Grey's Anatomy. Even when Fox was at his anti-hero, drug-addled, bearded best and Terry was more ghost than dream, it was all boilerplate alcoholic-dad-guilt-trips-overachieving-son melodrama — tired, overacted, and certainly not getting us anywhere closer to closing the loop of Lost frustration. And then last night, inside the sideways parallel universe part of what's become an increasingly fulfilling final season, Jack became a father himself:

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Make no mistake: that was melodrama, alright. ("That part with his son made me want to die in a murder suicide that Jack would still be proud of me for" was how my buddy Joe Cox over at The Inductive put it in an e-mail this morning.) But it connected, man. As someone who's been through the real alcoholic-dad-guilt-trips-overachieving-son melodrama, it's reassuring to see its real-life redemption onscreen: respect, pride, and a pizza. Sometimes that's all it takes, and while the Lost back stories all come to a head like never before (that pizza, after all, is suddenly looking more important to the show's conclusion than the mythical numbers), remember your own back story and its simplicity this year, the hundredth anniversary of Father's Day. Maybe celebrate a little early, for the Shephards.